


rosa sericea

by Creamsicle_Corvid



Series: winged roses [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Demons, Gen, Slow Burn, here I go, let's hope I do this correctly, will upd8 tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 20:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22004056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creamsicle_Corvid/pseuds/Creamsicle_Corvid
Summary: Kanaya meets someone on the way home from work. She seems a little... off.(Summary is subject to change.)
Relationships: Kanaya Maryam & Karkat Vantas, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Series: winged roses [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583902
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	rosa sericea

Today is the kind of day that, were you an author, you could write poetry about. The kind of poetry that conjures up vivid sounds of clinking rain and a sense of something lurking just beyond the imagination. The kind of poetry that creates a feeling of ice crawling amongst one’s bones, and that makes a gentle cup of tea all the more inviting, but that also reminds one how fickle and fleeting of a comfort it is. The kind of poetry that makes one disturbingly aware of one’s own mortality.

However, you are not an author, and if you tried to write poetry the end result would likely be long, confusing, and overall very bad. That won’t stop you from appreciating the aesthetics of today’s weather, though.

You peer out from under your umbrella. Several drops of water immediately fall on your head, and you retreat back into your drab gray shell. Normally, the entire point of an umbrella is that you don’t leave its shelter during rain, but right now it’s so foggy that you can barely see three feet in front of you even without the streams coming off of your umbrella obscuring your vision. You have to make sure that you don’t get surprised by a turn in the sidewalk and walk out onto the road. Not only would that get you pulverized by a car, which would ruin your handmade dress, but it would also be jaywalking, and you are a loyal follower of the law.

(Most of the time, anyway.)

Now that you know that the sidewalk is safe, you walk a few steps forward. Then you take another look in front of you. Then you take a few steps. It’s boring and repetitive and takes up all your attention, so you don’t notice the presence behind you until it lays a fluttering hand on your shoulder.

You flinch and spin around in a motion that you hope was graceful but that you’re sure wasn’t. (You note with satisfaction that you did not screech.)

“Hello,” she says. “I hope I did not startle you.”

The woman behind you is beautiful. Her skin is completely spotless and the palest white you have ever seen on a human being. Her hair is similarly blonde, and sticking to itself in one big clump, presumably because it’s wet from the rain. She wears a large, poufy, pink-purple dress the likes of which you have only seen in dramas about medieval royalty. Her eyes- her eyes are  _ enchanting. _ You can’t think of a better way to describe them, except for maybe ‘like amethysts but more vibrant’. There’s something about her, too, that sets off all the alarms in your mind, that screams uncanny and that makes you want to run away, and that in itself makes you want to draw closer, to find out more-

She clears her throat.

Your cheeks fill up with color. “I- erm, uh, no, that is to say you are fi- I am fine,” you stutter. How long were you staring at her?

Her expression doesn’t change, either with pity or with annoyance, which is comforting. (Now that you think about it, you haven’t yet seen her blink.) She continues on. “I stopped you because I thought you might like to know that this road is blocked.”

“What do you mean, it’s blocked?” You can’t help but let a hint of annoyance creep its way into your voice even when talking to this lady. You’re having a friend over for dinner tonight, and you would like to have food prepared and a table cleaned of all of your various junk before he arrives

If she notices your irritation, she doesn’t show it. “What I mean is that there are four men standing ominously in the center of the sidewalk in such a way that they cannot be gone around. I believe you may know them?”

“Four men? Why would four men-“ and then it clicks. The idiot who’s been following you around for the past two weeks must have gotten together some of his friends to get you to stop ignoring his advances. It’s inconvenient that they know your schedule, but with a little reorganization of your day and maybe taking a bus or two you can change that. “Oh, them.”

“So you have met them.”

“Unfortunately.”

She chuckles dryly. “I know another route. Would you like me to show you?” She holds out a hand. You notice that the border between the bodice and skirt of her dress is decorated with a line of embroidered eyes.

“Sure,” you say.

And when you’re finally in front of your apartment building, turning around to thank the stranger for her help, she’s gone.

* * *

“An interesting thing happened on my way back here from sewing class,” you remark to Karkat that night while lifting pasta onto your plate.

“Oh?” He puts the parmesan cheese, which he is carefully shaking out on his spaghetti, down, and looks up at you.

You take that as an invitation to continue talking. “I met a mysterious woman who showed me an alternative route to my house. She was strange. For starters, she wore a dress that looked hundreds of years out of style at the least, and was likely far too expensive to wear in the rain, and she had these  _ eyes _ …” You sigh wistfully. “She seemed almost… otherworldly, in a way.”

He stills with his fork halfway up to his mouth. Something you can’t identify flashes through his eyes, and he puts the fork down.

“Huh,” he says slowly. “…Yeah, that’s pretty weird.”

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is appreciated, ESPECIALLY where characters and plot holes are involved.  
> I have another bit of this series made that I'll revise and post next week, but after that I'm taking a break to do some plotting so that this doesn't end up as an unfinished trainwreck.  
> This is, by the way, the main work in this series; the others are what I think I'll refer to as 'the Karkat chapters'. They aren't required reading to understand this, but you should probably read this to understand them.


End file.
